Model-document coupling in aPS engineering: Challenges and requirements engineering use case

Especially due to the ever-increasing complexity of automated production systems, model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is gaining more and more importance. Nevertheless, system models do not stand for themselves - rather, they are related to a multitude of engineering documents such as requirements specification documents, CAD drawings or electric circuit diagrams. Especially for practical applications, it is therefore essential to couple system models with such engineering documents. As a basis to overcome this issue, this paper proposes a concept for coupling models and documents in automated production systems at the example of requirements engineering models. The concept envisions an automatic generation process from such models to textual Functional Specification Documents (FSDs), which are often used throughout negotiation between manufacturers and customers. Changes to such FSDs, e.g. made via PDF annotation tools, are then propagated back to the respective models. We envision the concept to be a basis for future extensions that aim at improving current MBSE approaches to make them more productive and attractive for practical applications during engineering of automated production systems.